By magnetic wire is understood magnetically conducting wire or wire with magnetic properties, particularly with a high magnetic permeability, such as used e.g. for manufacturing a magnetic flux return path, such as the magnetic core of transformers, induction coils, electric motors, et cetera.
The idea of replacing stacked sheets or plates of the magnetic core of a transformer by magnetic wires is already known. This is e.g., described in the following patent documents: Canadian patent no. 1309149, German publication DE 19937073A1; International patent publication
WO 00/44006 and Japanese publication 2004-363512 and International patent publication WO 91/09442.
The use of magnetic wires instead of magnetic sheets or plates for manufacturing magnetic cores has many advantages, as already described in the above-mentioned patent documents.
As particularly mentioned in WO 91/09442, some important advantages of utilizing magnetic wires instead of magnetic sheets or plates are obtained by the fact that the layers of magnetic material wire can be constructed of any wire geometry as for example square, flat, round, oval, triangular or other desirable cross sections to allow various compact packing characteristics in the layers of the magnetic core for different applications.
Another important feature, clearly described in WO 91/09442, is the use of the standard coil winding techniques for manufacturing the magnetic core forming the magnetic flux return path of a transformer. These standard coil winding techniques consist in forming the magnetic core or magnetic flux return path by winding a plurality of separate or discrete windings of magnetic material wire in closely adjacent relationship to form at least one layer of the magnetic core. This is a rather cumbersome and expensive operation for forming the magnetic core because each layer of the core is formed by winding a great number of adjacent, separate windings of the magnetic wire closely to each other. Moreover, the magnetic core, built up in this way by all separate, individual magnetic wires does not form a stable packed configuration.